Perfect Sentences are Balanced, Here's How It's Done

Lesson 2 of "'Who's got style?" Creating Perfect Sentences with Nina Schuyler

cuuuuutee Mariam Chagelishvili

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Syntax as the Skeleton of the Sentence: For week one, we focused on syntax, and maybe you’re now sensing that sentences have an architecture, or what I like to think of as bones or a skeleton. I’ve come to think of sentences as alive, and so it must have some structure to hold up this being. The skeleton gives it shape, how it can move, and generates a response in the reader.

As Ben Marcus said, “Every word was once an animal.”

Brian Dillon followed with, “Every sentence was once an animal.”

For inspiration (just so you don’t feel like you’re fooling around in a cul-de-sac, swirling in the minutiae), I’m reminded of an exchange overheard by Annie Dillard, which she wrote about in her book, The Writing Life.

A student asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?”

“Well,” the writer said, “do you like sentences?”

I have a little more to add to the skeletal design of the sentence. You have more choices about the design! Remember, one easy way to improve your writing is to have a wider variety of sentences. But I also want to say that you may find you really love some of these style techniques and others don’t suit you. That’s fine. Think of these four weeks as a chance to expand what you know. As one of my students said the other day, these are ‘practice sentences.’ We’re just practicing and feeling all the different ways a sentence can be alive.

The Sentence is a Tree: Making Branches